


Jeeves and the Piano Player

by gracefultree



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-15 12:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5785990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracefultree/pseuds/gracefultree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bertie has a small job as a piano player.  Enter Jeeves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jeeves and the Piano Player

My Aunt Agatha is always going on about how I'm a scourge of humankind and a wastrel, and if I would just do two small things, I would be almost salvageable.   

The first of those things is, as it is for every young English gentleman, to get married and have children to perpetuate the race and keep the family name going.  Well, I have absolutely no intention of marrying, so my aunt is going to be disappointed.  You see, I'm an invert.  I prefer the intimate company of men.  Don't tell dear Aged A.  I believe my Aunt Dahlia knows, but she'd never say anything to me about it.  Not that it matters.  Even if Aunt Agatha were to find out, she'd find a way to hide the scandal rather than face a public desecration of the Wooster name.   

The other thing my aunt wants of me is, in many ways, simpler.  She wants me to have a job.  Honest toil.  Drawing the wet stuff and hewing the wood.  In theory, I have no problem with this idea.  I don't do very much, and the idea of working, while slightly distasteful, isn't as abhorrent as she seems to think I think it is.  It's the kind of work she wants me to do that's the problem. 

She wants me to be a banker.  Now, I don't know about you, but I have no head for numbers, and no idea how to manage finances, which is why I hire a valet to manage mine in the first place.  Having someone to dress me, feed me and take care of me doesn't hurt, either.   

But having a job that I liked? Or a job I actually enjoyed?  Well, I tried it out after I left Oxford.  I got myself a job at a local club I belong to, and every Tuesday when I'm in London, when I give my man the night off, I go out to this club and play the piano in exchange for my drinks.  It's a rather satisfactory arrangement all around, from what I'm told.   

Pierre, the Frenchman who owns the club, named, rather aptly, Pierre's, smiles at me quite broadly whenever I walk in the door.  There's always a martini waiting at the piano, and his bartender keeps me well-oiled throughout the evening.   

I can't tell my aunt about this job, though, for Pierre's is a rather well-known underground club for inverts.   

I'd been going all throughout school, whenever I was down to London, and settled in as a regular once I moved officially to the metropolis.  I happened to sit at the piano one evening, and Pierre and the other patrons were so impressed that he offered me the job.  It's not often that there's music at an invert club, after all, and the ability for two men to dance together like that is rather spiffing, don't you know.   

As the resident piano player, I get many offers and drinks thrown my way.  It's all rather flattering, but I'm not 'on the market,' as the saying goes.  I've had a bit of fun, I'm human, after all, but I'm usually content to be among my own kind without needing to dally with strangers.   

It was with this in mind that I sat down at the bench on a rainy Tuesday in July.  I'd been away from London for over a month, what with one thing and another, and the presence of my fellows was a welcome relief after evading the clutches of several women to whom Aunt Agatha tried to engage me.  I was on my fourth song when I realized that my throat had become dryer than the Sahara. Pierre stood at the bar, engaged in heated conversation with another of the regulars, an older gentleman who, I believe, has a title and land, while the other bartender was nowhere to be seen.  I sighed and returned my focus to the piano.   

. 

. 

. 

"I hope a martini will serve,” a voice said next to me, as a small bit of heaven in a glass floated into my vision.  I looked up the arm of the man offering it, finding a tall, dark-haired man with light eyes under the half-mask we were all required to wear.  (To protect our anonymity, don't you know.) 

I'd admired him from afar for weeks before I left the metrop. Who wouldn't, when being presented with such a perfect specimen of man? And it seemed that he'd been watching me, as well, for the martini he handed me was just to my liking.   

He wore proper evening wear, like the rest of us, and there were no signs that he was anything other than a well-dressed man out for a spot of dinner and entertainment.  Good.  One always hopes the newer people know how to act.  I've been around long enough to be able to sense that while he might be new to this particular club, he wasn't new to the rules of being an invert in a world that hates us.   

I smiled as I accepted the drink. "Cheers, old thing," I said, clinking my glass to his.  "Just what the doctor ordered." 

"May I sit with you a moment or two?" he asked.  I hadn't expected the politeness.  Usually men just sat themselves down next to me on the bench and started jabbering away.  Or groping me, but Pierre had thrown any number of men out for doing that, and anyone worth their snuff would ask around before approaching the resident piano player.   

I shifted on the bench, giving him what room the small piece of furniture provided.  I felt the heat of his body where his thigh pressed against mine as we sipped our drinks.   

"They call you Albert, do they not?" he asked.  I nodded.  “You may call me Roger."   

"You've been watching me," I commented. 

"You've noticed," he replied with a smile, clearly pleased.   

I smiled back at him.  "Yes."   

"The owner has already warned me off," he said. "When I asked after your preferred drink."   

"Oh? What did he say?"   

"If you press your attentions and Bertie's not amenable, you'll have half the patrons at your throat in seconds, I believe were his words.”   

"Will you attempt to press your attentions?" I asked, hearing the flirtation in my voice.   

"Would that be amenable?"   

"I haven't been properly courted in a very long time.  I could see myself being persuaded," I murmured.  "I'm not interested in something quick and meaningless." 

"Nor am I," he responded.   

"Your situation?" I persisted, needing to get some of the details out of the way.  It wouldn’t be prudent to consider anything if there wasn’t the common ground of geography at the very least. 

"I work in London, with occasional trips to the country as my master desires."   

"Ah, you're in service?" 

"Indeed."  He didn't sound pleased to admit it and I worried that his good humor had left.  "Come to the back with me," he asked softly, dispelling that fear.  “Please."  His interest in me shone from his eyes, and I was trying to think of a way to gently refuse him when Pierre stepped up to us.   

"Monsignor Albert, do you require any assistance?" he asked, for he knew my preference for solitude unless I sought out company on my own.   

Roger glanced between us, clearly at a loss.   

"Am I disturbing --?" 

Before I made a decision to do it, my hand landed on his knee.   

"We're fine, Pierre, thank you," I said, giving Roger's knee a squeeze.  "Roger volunteered to turn the pages for me for my next set.  The lads must be anxious for me to get started again, what?" 

"Yes, yes, that is so," Pierre replied, noting my hand and where it was.  It was touching, that he would come over to check on me.  We'd dallied a time or two, back before he found Gregory, and he still held a soft spot for me, it seemed.   

"Sorry about that," I said to Roger, patting his knee and releasing him as soon as Pierre left.  "I don't tend to appreciate being approached when I'm playing, and Pierre knows it."   

Roger grunted.  "You were lovers, once," he stated.   

"A long time ago," I agreed.  “I don’t usually go to the back with someone so quickly,” I said, deciding to explain myself a little more, lest he misunderstand the situation. For all that Roger was handsome, I barely knew him. “I don’t know you yet.” 

“Then allow me to stand behind you and turn the pages while you play, and we may talk,” he suggested, taking up the excuse I had manufactured for his presence. At one point he sat beside me again and took up the harmony, proving an acceptable pianist. 

We played for several hours, and the clientele seemed to enjoy the entertainment.  As the evening wore on, my companion slowly lost his fleetness about the ivories and settled on turning pages for me again, a hand resting on my lower back or shoulder to steady himself when he lent over.   

I continued playing a few bars when he kissed me, my fingers not yet abreast of the fact that my brain, and other anatomy, was no longer engaged in their former pursuit.  I expected the kiss, had been expecting it for a long time, but still it startled me.   

There was a brief outcry from the multitude when the music came to such an abrupt end, but I was too engaged in other, more pressing matters to notice.  I liked the kiss, and by that time I felt comfortable enough to take him up on his offer. We found our way to one of the small alcoves that lined the back room of the club, pulled the curtain roughly into place, and started kissing in earnest.   

He tasted of brandy and cheap cigarettes.  I didn’t mind in the slightest. 

In this sort of situation, time is of the essence.  He had my flies open and my cock in his hand almost as soon as the curtain closed behind us.  It didn't take much longer for me to free him, and we pulled each other off frantically, stifling our cries in each others mouths and against each other's shoulders.  It was quick, and mutual, with the minimal wrinkling of clothing or mussing of hair.   

"I knew you would have an aristocrat's hands," he whispered at one point as my fingers closed around him.  My mouth was far too occupied to respond in words.   

I returned to the piano afterwards, finishing out the night.  Roger stayed long enough to buy me another drink before he had to leave, saying he had to be up early for work.  He had, by then, figured out that I was of the upper class, and I’d joked about hiring him, for he finally admitted he was a valet, and it would not be the first time men like us turned such a situation to our advantage.  He did not want to be the lover of his master, he said firmly.  It wasn't negotiable, and it wasn't funny. 

. 

. 

. 

"That man you were with, what was his name?" Pierre asked the following week when I arrived.   

"He said to call him Roger," I answered.   

"It's not like you to do something like that," he chided.  “To take to someone so quickly.” 

I shrugged and downed the drink he offered.  "He seemed lonely."  I looked away.  "And I liked the look of his mouth."   

"Try not to get hurt, Bertie," he said gently.   

I shrugged again.  "It was just a bit of fun,” I said as nonchalantly as I could.  “He’s polite, and won’t press too hard. In fact, he’ll probably just turn the pages of my music tonight until I decide to go to the back with him.” 

"I'll be watching," Pierre said.  "He's been here almost every night, asking after you.  Gregory is worried, and so am I." 

Sure enough, Roger showed up that evening.  He bought me a drink, as he had the week before, though he didn't say anything and simply stood nearby and turned pages as I'd claimed he would.  It was perplexing.  I half-expected him to proposition me as soon as he came in, despite my assertion to Pierre.  I half-expected him to ask me to bed at the end of the night.  Instead, all he did was continue his subtle seduction.  After a certain point he sat and played with me as he had the week before. 

I thought about him quite a bit the next few weeks, looking forward to Tuesdays with eager anticipation.  He continued courting me.  We went to the back a few times, doing nothing we hadn't done the first night.  We hadn't said it, but it was clear between us that sex was not yet an option.   

"When we come together truly, I want it in a bed," he said to me, kissing my neck as he stroked and tugged and brought me off.   

"We can’t go back to mine," I explained.  "My valet would turn us in quicker than a hound chasing a hare."   

"Nor can we go to mine," he said regretfully.  "I doubt my employer would be pleasantly disposed to discovering such an occurrence under his roof."   I suggested a hotel, but he merely frowned and acted as if I hadn’t spoken. 

We met weekly despite all that.  I would be at the club playing, and at some point in the evening, he would join me.  We would play together until an hour before closing and then secret ourselves away in one of the back alcoves for a bit of fun. I'd grown to like him quite a bit, and the week he didn't come felt lonely and dark to me.  He explained that his night off had been switched that week, when I next encountered him.  We made up for lost time.   

Then I had to go to the county with the Drones for one reason or another, and had to do it rather suddenly.  I was able to post a note to Pierre, informing him of my absence, but there was no way I could ask him to tell my new friend, though I suspect he did.  When next we saw each other, neither of us cared about a bed, and Roger took me in the little alcove that had become ours.   

He was an excellent lover, always attentive, always inventive with the small space we had to work with. 

We hadn't exchanged our real names, but he'd started calling me Bertie in the heat of passion, and allowed me to call him Reggie.  Not the usual nickname for a Roger, but I suspected it was from his real name.  Little did he know that I was Bertie in real life.   

After the first few meetings, we started talking more intimately. I told him about my family, my friends, the adventures I tended to become embroiled in. He regaled me with stories of a servant’s life, the foibles of his various masters and the other staff, and a bit about his home life as a child and why he went into service in the first place.  We'd talk, curled around each other after our tryst, until Pierre kicked us out.  We'd long since taken off our masks with each other.  I even told him about my parents, something none of my previous lovers knew. 

. 

. 

. 

It was around that time that my Aunt Agatha got it into her head (yet again) that I needed to marry, and had a girl lined up for me.  I was so distressed that I didn't even go to the piano when I walked into Pierre's, simply sitting at the bar and ordering a drink.  Roger found me there several hours later.   

"What's wrong?" he demanded, putting an arm around me.  We were seen as an established couple by that point, and the other patrons didn't blink that he was so familiar with me.   

"Women, Reggie," I moaned.  "My aunt's gone and gotten me engaged to one."   He stiffened and moved to pull away.   

"Don't go," I pleaded.  "I don't want to marry her.  I told her, my aunt, you know, and she went through with it and is planning the blasted thing anyway. It was in the papers this morning!” 

"There's always been a possibility of this happening," he said, a certain stuffiness in his voice.  "In some ways I am more free than you, not being required to marry." 

Our love-making that night was desperate.  I begged him to come to a hotel with me, to have a bed, just once, but he refused.  It was with heavy hearts that we kissed goodbye.   

He didn't come to the club for several weeks after that.  I missed him terribly, and wanted to see him, especially since the girl in question had drifted away like smoke when a former fiancee showed up. I high-tailed it off to America, the better to get away from everything, though I made sure to leave a note with Pierre for Reggie, should he return.   

He hadn’t shown his face at the club but once while I’d been gone, and when I got back, it was as if he’d disappeared. No one heard anything of him, and none of the men who frequented other clubs knew where he’d gone, though Pierre told me he’d read my note the one time he had shown up. 

With one thing and another, it was two months after I returned from the Americas before we saw each other again.  We kissed, and cried, and went round the back immediately.  He'd gotten my note, he said, and wished he'd had a way to tell me that he wasn't angry with me, for we'd parted with strong words about it all, despite the lovemaking.  He reaffirmed that he couldn't keep on with me, and that he couldn't, in good conscious, be my lover if I were married, or even engaged. 

We parted.  I cried that night, I must admit.  It had been a long time since I'd opened myself up to someone, and it bally well hurt that he would abandon me over something I couldn’t control. 

I pined.  The boys at the Drones noticed that something was off with jolly Bertram, and I informed them that I was contemplating the priesthood.  We all laughed at that, and then someone reminded me that it was Boat Race night, and we got rather snozzled and I ended up before a magistrate for stealing a policeman's helmet.   Imagine my surprise when I answered my door the next morning to find Reggie standing there, dressed as a valet, claiming the agency sent him.  I couldn't speak, I was so startled.   

He handed me a restorative that had me awake and aware by the time it reached my stomach. 

“I have reevaluated our situation,” he stated, and I could hear passion in his voice. “I believe that with some small attention to detail, we may be able to make the world believe what we wish them to believe while we live our lives as lovers. My name is Reginald Jeeves.” 

He put the flat to rights in mere moments and had me naked and in the bath moments after that because he wanted me to be clean-smelling and awake for our first tryst as true lovers.  Then he took me to bed.  My bed.   _Our_ bed.   

“I’ve missed you so,” I whispered much later, my voice low and husky. 

“I missed you, too,” he replied. “I was wrong to leave the way I did. I should have waited, or tried to help. I needed to think, needed to miss you, to realize what a mistake I made in letting you go.” 

“This thing between us, I want it to be a forever thing, Reggie,” I informed him.   

“It will be, Bertie,” he agreed. “It is.” 


End file.
